Trudeau’s carbon tax deserves our support

Canadian voters do not have to decide today whether they will keep or kill Justin Trudeau’s federal carbon tax.

But in less than a year, they will.

The prime minister guaranteed that the Oct. 21, 2019 general election will be fought over climate change when he unveiled his emissions-cutting agenda on Tuesday in the Toronto riding of one of the plan’s most intransigent foes — Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Predictably, as if on cue, both Ford and federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer immediately denounced Trudeau’s proposal as a cash-grab that will hammer the economy while doing almost nothing to curb carbon-dioxide emissions.

Yet with equal predictability, neither naysayer offered an alternative plan to halt climate change. And that egregious failure should not only erode their credibility, it should make the choice facing voters obvious.

Unless someone comes forward with a better way to fight climate change, Trudeau’s carbon tax deserves Canada’s full support.

It’s past the time for anyone to deny that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten a planetary environmental catastrophe.

Just this month, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released yet another plea for the nations of the world to pull together to avert disaster.

The IPCC warned that without fast, unprecedented action, rising global temperatures will unleash more extreme weather, more violent storms and more deadly floods than ever before. We’re already witnessing more human deaths, more refugees, more economic devastation and more extinct animal species — all because of climate change.

Canada is a relatively minor contributor to this crisis. But we’re a rich nation that sees itself as a moral example to the world. We belong in the front trenches of this fight, ready to lead the others.

Trudeau has long been clear his government would impose a carbon tax starting next year in provinces that lack a carbon-pricing plan of their own. At the moment, that dubious club of holdouts consists of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick and, saddest of all, Ontario, where Ford foolishly scrapped an existing carbon-cutting plan. Consequently, the federal government will begin taxing emissions in those provinces while handling hefty cash rebates to taxpayers living there.

Yes, there’s an upside. Trudeau’s critics will rail against the carbon taxes on gasoline, diesel, natural gas and coal-fired emissions as well as new taxes on business and industrial emissions. But the bite of those taxes will be dulled by the rebate cheques.

Indeed, according to the government’s estimates, 80 per cent of Ontario households will get more money back from those rebates than they will pay in carbon taxes. Even more important, the government estimates indicate that by changing the behaviour of individuals as well as industry, the carbon tax will help lower Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 8.3 per cent in 2022 compared to what they were in 2015.

In a report released last week, the C.D. Howe Institute, a nonpartisan, policy research organization, concluded Trudeau’s carbon-tax plan is a sound weapon in the fight against climate change.

Meanwhile, this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize for economics recently went to two Americans who championed the economic case for tackling climate change.

No one can promise that the road won’t be bumpy or that Trudeau’s carbon tax won’t slow economic growth in the short-term.

But for Scheer and Ford, we would ask: What’s your solution? And for those focused solely on economic growth, we would ask: What’s this planet worth to you?

And how much are you willing to pay to save it for your grandchildren?